A former Indian High Commissioner who paid a live-in domestic worker $9 a day to keep his eight-bedroom Canberra home, after he arranged for her "posting" in Australia for the "reception and entertainment of guests", has been ordered to pay more than $130,000 compensation.
Optus has again failed to overturn a finding that underpaying workers' long service leave entitlements when they leave might count as a continuing offence under Victorian law, clearing the way for the State's Wage Inspectorate to pursue daily fines that could run into millions for the period before the telco rectified the alleged issue.
Shine and RAFFWU are preparing a class action against KFC to win compensation for potentially tens of thousands of workers allegedly denied proper rest breaks, weeks after the Federal Court slammed the SDA over its approach to McDonald's rest breaks litigation and decided its case should run concurrently with an earlier Shine/RAFFWU proceeding.
A judge who rejected a SDA bid to prioritise its breaks case against McDonald's by staying an earlier RAFFWU-backed class action has contrasted the "lacklustre and misdirected approach" of the country's second-largest union with that of the unregistered, seven-year-old union and its lawyers.
The FWC has reinstated a worker dismissed for allegedly trying to extend her annual leave by taking sick leave, which the employer viewed as a "dishonest" attempt to mislead it.
In what is believed to be the first workplace breastfeeding discrimination ruling, a tribunal has found that a KFC franchisee indirectly discriminated against a worker when it told her to express milk in a tent, within a storeroom with no door.
A FWC full bench has extended a CBA worker's AWA because reverting to the enterprise agreement would reduce her long service leave pay by more than $17,000, but it refused the bank's request to keep the details of the individual contract confidential.
In a significant decision on directors' liability for underpayments, a court has found that although the co-founder of Chatime was unaware the bubble-tea chain was in breach of workplace laws, he understood enough about award obligations around casual and weekend penalty rates to be considered complicit.
Large corporates and universities accounted for almost two-thirds of the $509 million in unpaid wages and entitlements recovered by the FWO in 2022-23 on behalf of more than 250,000 workers, the workplace watchdog revealed today.
The FWC has reinforced its view that zombie agreements should not be extended "merely" because the parties are in harmony, observing that nothing is stopping a charity funded by Australia's orchestras from negotiating a new deal with its valued finance manager.